Exelon axes contractor that provided security at nuclear plants

LIMERICK -- Exelon Nuclear, which owns and operates the Limerick Nuclear Generating Station, has fired the company providing security at all 10 of its plants following the release of video footage of guards sleeping on the job at the Peach Bottom nuclear plant in York County.

Peach Bottom was not the only Exelon station to have a sleeping security guard problem.

On July 25, 2006, a security supervisor at the Limerick station was fired for being “inattentive” while on duty.

“Based on our assessment, we have decided to directly manage our own security force to ensure the highest standards of excellence,” Charles Pardee, chief nuclear officer for Exelon said in a prepared release.

David Petersen, a spokesman for the Limerick plant, said transition away from Wackenhut Security is expected to be completed there by July.

“We’ll begin that process in April, but we wanted to be sure we complete our spring re-fueling outage first,” Petersen said.

He said the company came to this decision as a result of its three-month review of its security procedures, which convinced the company leaders “that Exelon Nuclear has a good management model and we have an opportunity to establish that model for our security services.”

The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s reaction to Exelon’s decision was contained in a prepared statement.

“This is an Exelon decision,” the statement read. “The NRC holds its licensees

to strict security requirements, many enhanced in the years following the 9/11 attacks. It is the responsibility of the companies that operate these plants to meet those high standards.”

At Exelon, that responsibility had, until now, been passed on to Wackenhut, a company whose employees racked up an extensive record of complaints about sleeping on the job in recent years.

Many of those complaints were connected to how many hours the guards were allowed to work in a single week, although NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said that was not the cause of the problem at Peach Bottom.

At the Exelon-owned Three-Mile Island plant, a total of five incidents of employees sleeping, including a supervisor in a control room, were investigated over a two-year period.

Sheehan conceded that the Peach Bottom video had a definitive impact on the issue and that no investigation like the one at Peach Bottom was ever conducted at either Limerick or Three-Mile Island, despite similar incidents.

“We had no evidence that there was any problem on a similar scale at Limerick, or TMI or the others,” said Sheehan.

But it was not until after NRC investigated Peach Bottom in the wake of the video, however, that inspectors found out the scale of the problem there, he said. Ten Peach Bottom employees were found to have been “inattentive” at different times from March to August, said Sheehan.

He also said the fact that the video had such a large impact is causing concern that it may lead to other employees trying to secretly record problems at nuclear plants.

“These days, when everything ends up on YouTube, we could have a real security problem with people taking videos inside plants.

Unfortunately for Kerry Beal, the employee who took the video, there was little personal benefit to be earned for exposing the problem.

Sheehan said the NRC received a letter about the sleeping guards at Peach Bottom in March. The plant was notified, but an investigation there “could not substantiate” the claims.

Then Beal secretly shot the video of guards sleeping in a “ready room” where they were supposed to be on call and it was released to a New York City television station.

When the dust settled, Exelon fired Wackenhut from providing security at Peach Bottom and Beal was not among the former Wackenhut guards Exelon re-hired.

In the wake of the Peach Bottom incident, the NRC issued a bulletin requiring companies at every nuclear power plant to provide “certain specific information about their security programs.”

“For example, we are requesting information about the physical conditions at security posts, including lighting, temperature, noise and stimuli that may help officers stay alert,” Sheehan wrote in an e-mail.